Name as it appears on the ballot: Sabrina “Bree” Davis 

Age: 39 

Party Affiliation: Republican (Centrist) 

Campaign website: www.DavisforDurham.com  

Occupation & employer: Social Entrepreneur, Researcher UNC Chapel Hill (School of Medicine) 

Years lived in Durham: 12 (October 1st, 2009) 

1. Given the direction of Durham government, would you say things are on the right course? If not, for what specific changes will you advocate if elected?  

Durham’s governmental issues appear to be chronically chaotic as dissenting views often stall progress and disengage residents in their efforts to provide solutions and if we continue to allow our seated officials to dance around issues that are most critical to our community’s opportunity to innovate and thrive — if even ONE Durham resident or household lacks from being impoverished, unsafe or unhealthy we have fallen short in our effort.  

I often lament that we are in our country’s 2nd Reconstruction era. Briefly, during the 1890s, a national phenomenon called Fusion politics united political parties. In some western states the Populist (or People’s Party) and the Democratic Party united, but here in Wilmington, North Carolina the movement, spearheaded by agricultural leader Marion Butler (1863-1938), combined the Populist and Republican parties to advocate for the needs of poor Black farmers. I’d like to see more fusion politics and less divisive extremes from both sides as an effective historical antidote to our current local partisan imbalances that hamper actual progress.   

To right the wrongs of history I strongly advocate that we elect new leadership across the ballot. How can we say that 80% of our residents agree on the same political party’s ideologies and have such dissent in our city and county government? When Durham is experiencing increased levels of crime, poverty, and inequality. Observing our current council’s inability to cohesively address and tackle the societal ills of the Durham community has been disappointing — as Durham has historically touted itself as world renowned for progress and success. As Mayor, I would be unrelenting in my efforts to correct past wrongs whether intentional or not.   

2. Please identify the three most pressing issues you believe the city faces and how you believe the city should address them.  

Our inability to live up to our 1913 motto of offering a town that is world renowned for its health, wealth, progress, and success! Many Durham residents face issues in the equity of the affordability in calling a historically thriving place like Durham home. There are glaring deficiencies in the effective resource management of our local government —which includes uninhabitable homes and blighted business store fronts that were once beacons for residents to live, work, and play in. We are facing a supply and demand shortage in Durham’s most important resources. 

We will have to engage our new comprehensive plan as a whole community to see the progress that we are destined for. As Mayor, I envision Durham creating better environmental, economic, and strengthening opportunities for racial healing among our residents.

3. What in your record as a public official or other experience demonstrates your ability to be effective as a member of the city council and as an advocate for the issues that you believe are important? 

As a Social Entrepreneur, Researcher and Artist — I am curious, sensitive, and empathic towards the plight of others. In addition to holding a Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree, I have over two decades of aggregate experience in advocacy, urban planning/development and public service. Having worked in public health, research, law enforcement as a communications officer (dispatcher), social and political cause campaigns (i.e., Obama for America, Fight for $15 and Cycle 1 of Durham’s Participatory Budgeting as a budget delegate) and have also lobbied in the halls of our nation’s capital (specifically to the late Congressman Elijah Cummings – who was the former Congressional Black Caucus Chair and beloved lawmaker) on behalf of solid immigration policy improvements for the safety and well-being of those encountering issues of discrimination within our criminal justice and health care systems.

I consider myself the more progressive candidate on the slate because I have had these unique experiences, which all tie into what is currently needed in the leadership of Durham to move us towards a better horizon. 

4. What’s the best or most important thing the city council has done in the past year? Alternatively, name a decision you believe the council got wrong or an issue you believe the city should have handled differently. Please explain your answer. 

Most importantly Durham City Council has shown the need for better and stronger leadership over the affairs and concerns of some of its most vulnerable residents. Calling for and acknowledging the need for Federal Reparations was a start in 2020. But now we should heal the divide between Durham’s have more’s, haves, and have nots. Simple as that. We need to improve the managing of our existing resources. I am a strong advocate for Reparations for the descendants of American Slavery and look forward as Mayor to providing more tangible resources towards payment. Durham recently passed $6 million dollars (and every year going forward) in our budget for more “green and equitable infrastructure” in historically Black neighborhoods…that is NOT ENOUGH! As public officials we will need to advocate for more because its available – add 1 or 2 more zero’s and then we have a plan of action for righting the wrongs of history in Durham with access to technological innovations towards eradicating systemic issues like poverty in our forward moving city.

5. The city has seen an uptick in gun homicides since 2018, including recent tragic deaths of children. Gun violence is obviously a multifaceted problem with no simple solution. But, in your view, what can or should the city be doing to stem the tide of violence that it isn’t doing now? 

As we continue to experience the crippling effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic, we have also seen a spike in violent crime. Whether or not it can be directly correlated our most recent spike in gun violence remains to be studied — but its affects are a daily reality of cyclical trauma in our community.  Many Durham residents are taking to social media platforms, their RING Doorbells and Neighborhood Alerts to voice their desperation and to engage the leadership of Durham in solid ways to fortify our community against violent crime.  Durham emphatically calls itself the “City of Medicine” when we really should be striving for a city of “Health & Wellness”, as some have lamented, and I echo as a Mayoral Candidate. 

Creating clearer paths to opportunities and access to community building tools through policy implementation generates improved (more sustainable) resources for our most vulnerable residents AND should be the main ingredients of our comprehensive plan’s flavor. Our children and elders depend on us for health and safety, and it pains me to know that they are held captive in violence daily. Increase wages and wellness resources to our law enforcement and first responders – it is also important that we engage fully with our newly formed Community Safety Department (CSD). Instead of transferring 15 of DPD’s positions, our council should have intuitively fully funded Durham Police Departments positions as well as rigorously piloting the CSD. All of Durham’s Public Safety agencies should be actively working in tandem, well trained on the needs of our residents, and well-staffed. These efforts would be ideal in the implementation of our goal to ebb the tide of violence and securing a more holistic community policing standard for Durham. 

6. Do you support transferring 15 positions from the Durham Police Department to the newly created Community Safety Department for its new pilot programs? How should the city further grow the Community Safety Department if the pilot programs are successful? 

Please see previous response.

7. Given the influx of people and money Durham has seen in recent years, and recent plans for Google and Apple to open offices in the area, gentrification has become a major concern in East Durham but also in other neighborhoods close to downtown. In what ways can or should the city intervene? 

While campaigning for Mayor, I have encountered many Durham residents who desire affordable housing, good public transportation, access to quality food, safety, health and wellness, a sense of belonging, racial justice, good schools, opportunities for good jobs, places to learn and plan and a clean environment. We will have to make use of and engage more intensely with our new Comprehensive Plan and hold our elected officials accountable to providing the utopia that Durham prides itself as being. We will also need to engage in solid poverty reduction and conciliation efforts, or we will continue to see residents who are displaced due to the rising costs of living, working, playing and doing business in Durham.  

8. How should the city address housing for people who currently make less than the $15/hour minimum wage? How can the city ensure more people make the current living wage?  

Increase the wages to $15/hr and encourage an eventual city/county wage at $25/hr. Overwhelmingly supporting our small and medium local industries is very important in the creation of better opportunities and resources – in requiring Apple and Google to create annual cohorts of 500 Durham residents to engage in a more assertive effort in training and employing Durham’s diverse workforce (e.g., teens, college students, stay at home moms, mid-level career changers and retired residents returning to work). Our city can work more assertively to better educate, train, and provide exceptional opportunities for our residents to earn a living wage. 

9. What are the city’s most pressing transit needs? How should the city expand bus services to reach more riders? 

Providing equitable, safe, and reliable transit options should be paramount to a city like Durham that is adding record numbers of people and their commutes around the Triangle annually. Having had unnecessary barriers in transportation here in Durham I am a strong advocate to adding more bus and paratransit services that run every 15 minutes or earlier as well as new local routes. There is also the great potential in making bus services more reliable with bus-only lanes and other infrastructure improvements that help buses move through traffic faster, and finally getting Durham residents connected to major destinations across the Triangle region with faster and more reliable service, including commuter rail would be integral in my transit advocacy efforts. Simply put, I know how it is to sit a bus stop in a torrential storm with no bus shelter in place. A practical transit plan that budgets funds that amplify Durham’s present and future transit goals in providing reliable and expanded routes throughout the Triangle for Durham residents.    

10. How should the council improve transit infrastructure for cyclists, who aren’t protected from traffic by physical barriers and don’t always have options for coordinated bike lanes? 

As an avid cyclist and concerned resident who has observed serious and sometimes tragic accidents with cyclists, I support expansive public engagement efforts with organizations like Bike Durham who have for years worked to increase the safety of cyclists who commute throughout our city by having protective posts placed alongside many of our major Durham streets & thoroughfares.

11. How do you think the city’s policy of Expanding Housing Choices will work to increase density in Durham’s urban core? Will the policy work to create more mixed-income communities? Should it work this way? What more could be done to add density or relieve pressures on home values? 

Expanding Housing Choices policy will be integral to the success of providing diverse affordable housing options to many of Durham’s residents. Our elected officials should be far more insistent in their goals of creating equitable and desirable Durham neighborhoods across our beautiful city. If implemented successfully, it encourages the increase in density of Durham’s urban core which ultimately provides a viable antidote to festering gentrification, economic development and racial disparities that have plagued Durham for decades. Innovation (defined as change) in urban planning, infrastructure and land use will in the long run create better housing options for many Durham residents.  

12. New census data shows that 19 percent of Durham’s Black residents live under the poverty line, while about 7 percent of whites and a third of Hispanic residents do. A 2020 Racial Equity Task Force report found growing wealth disparities between Black and white residents that were compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. How (if it all) do you think the city should use the report’s findings to make the city a more equitable one for all residents?

I emphatically reverberate the call for Reparations. Truth be told: the time is now to right the wrongs of Durham’s long inequitable history of harming its Black residents (e.g., the building of Hwy 147 through the heart of a once bustling Black Wall Street and the eventual decline of the historic Hayti / Fayetteville Street corridor). We are called on to answer with swift ACTION during this current of repeating of our cyclical history. I reiterate immediate recourse is needed as we barrel through this COVID-19 pandemic and our country’s 2nd Reconstruction era. We must get it right this time. Electing me as Mayor would ensure that there is leadership at the helm who is brave and compassionate enough to continue to fight for increased wages and opportunities to sustain a local business, advocating for the resources to reopen Black businesses that have been severely affected by this pandemic. I will work for the restoration of resources for both public and charter schools as they provide diverse access to the didactic tools Black students need to excel. As the Black community works towards achieving solid gains, we need well functioning and well-resourced health and community centers, and access to healthier local food options to blighted Durham neighborhoods – which often are historically Black. I am working on a crime prevention pilot with Rev. Allen Jones of the Change Paths Ministry who uses his front porch to serve food, offer clothes, support and guidance near the poverty and crime burdened Guthrie and Holloway Streets that is focused on turning critical crime corner stores into co-opted agribusiness beacons. Durham residents deserve a mayor who will fight to eradicate societal ills and champion environmental justice initiatives that provide viable solutions for a greener and more equitable Durham. From the Hayti to the Eno River Durham’s residents share in the responsibility in creating the vision for our success towards the next several decades – our efforts now can most assuredly right the wrongs of Durham’s history.

I also call for the increasing of our city’s “Reparations Budget” from $6 million to $60 million next year (with the additional help of earmarked State & Federal funds) and substantial increases every year after would be my goal as Durham Mayor. It is possible to achieve a Durham where there is more than a handout expected. Many residents remember or have heard of and would most certainly appreciate a once again thriving Black Durham.  

13. The city council established a Durham Workers’ Rights Commission in 2019. What do you feel it has achieved so far? What should its role and focus be, and how should it achieve its goals? Has the city supported it adequately?  

Improving employment conditions for all Durham workers is paramount to a healthy community and well-resourced local economy. Worker’s livable wages, benefits, and workplace conditions are the focus of the Durham Workers’ Rights Commission. Consistent and active community engagement efforts are integral to the success of any worker led commission. A Worker’s Bill of Rights is necessary and should be strongly advocated for by our elected officials. In previous years, private companies have been less than stellar and sometimes even downright inhumane in their policies towards workers. It is again up to the newly elected leadership of Durham to work diligently to ensure that workers’ wages and rights are being protected – more is required and demanded by this Mayoral candidate who has worked in both low and mid wage positions and witnessed my share of violations that went unopposed by the powers that be. I believe that strengthening our pledge to better working relations between public private partnerships is essential to the success of the Durham Worker’s Rights Commission.

14. What is the city doing currently to ensure environmental sustainability in new construction? What more could it be doing? 

Durham prides ourselves on our implementation of Green Buildings to demonstrate our obligation to environmental sustainability.  Durham’s dedication to achieving high levels of LEED certification, through the High Performance Building Policy, for all new facilities and major renovations exemplifies careful stewardship of natural resources and the land. Several buildings in our city have already received LEED certification, and several more are under design/construction.  

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